


Old Lights

by thegrimshapeofyoursmile



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Baking, Bread, Gen, Lie Low At Lupin's (Harry Potter), M/M, Trauma, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrimshapeofyoursmile/pseuds/thegrimshapeofyoursmile
Summary: He’s known this house, but he can’t properly remember, just like he’s known himself, but he can’t properly remember that, either. It’s hard to bear, almost as hard as the silence and the walls, and the way Moony sometimes looks at him when he thinks that Sirius does not notice.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	1. Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Slooowly getting used to writing in English again after spending the last months writing excessively in my native language only. JKR said and did some pretty despicable things in the last months, but that only makes me more determined to make this wonderful fandom that‘s given me so many beautiful moments and experiences even queerer than it already was.
> 
> The first chapter is slowly easing into the whole thing, so please bear with me. This will get better as we proceed.

“Stop fidgeting,” Moony says without lifting his head. Once, he might have said it with an exasperated, yet fond tone. Now he only sounds tired and a little too sharp for it to be friendly. 

Sirius looks at him just like he has looked at him for hours now, just like he has looked at him since the moment he appeared on Moony’s doorstep and asked in a very small voice whether Moony still was partial to strays and whether he would take one in if presented with the opportunity. And since then Sirius is in this house, a house that belonged to Moony’s parents at some point, or at least he is pretty sure it did, and now belongs to Moony, and it’s small and worn-out from lives that have left their marks on it, but it’s also cozy in a way Black houses never were and never could be.

Sirius does not know this house, not really.

He knows he’s known it, once. There is a faint memory itching at the back of his head, a hollowness that makes him think,  _ You were happy here, once. Otherwise you would remember more of it.  _ It’s always a gamble with those hollow spaces in his head, these days: Pick at them long enough and they either hurt you by giving you nothing, or by giving you a faded something, a picture drained of colours, until the taste of loss becomes unbearable for your human brain and the dog takes over. And with this house, Moony’s house, it’s the former. He’s known this house, but he can’t properly remember, just like he’s known himself, but he can’t properly remember that, either. It’s hard to bear, almost as hard as the silence and the walls, and the way Moony sometimes looks at him when he thinks that Sirius does not notice.

Joke’s on him, though: Sirius looks at him, too. He has never not looked at Moony if he had the chance, and that he can remember quite well because it hasn’t always been pleasant. 

“I’ll stop fidgeting when you go to bed,” he says.

Moony sighs and makes no move to do as he is told. Instead, he keeps his gaze on the notepad in front of him, his lips pressed into the firm line it always forms when Moony is deep in thought. He looks tired, with dark circles like bruises under his amber eyes and his veins popping up like blue rivers on his hands. But his grip around the Muggle pen is steady as he writes, no, calculates. That’s actually something Sirius remembers from when they lived together in their twenties, if only for the frustration and impatience it brought with it. He remembers looking at Moony’s head bent in the same stiffness-inducing angle as it is now and thinking,  _ Why is he doing this instead of letting me take care of it? I’ve got the money, we don’t have to count every single knut.  _ But it mattered to Moony, who has always been so proud even though he cannot really afford it, and it still matters now. Maybe now more than ever, because Sirius hasn’t been there for twelve years and his situation has drastically changed from his golden days. 

Sirius watches him until it becomes too much and he starts pacing again. He can’t help himself. Staying at one place is something he hasn’t done in months; settling seems absurd as long as his body tells him to run. But his heart tells him to stay, and his head is so fractured that it is of no help at all, and so he paces back and forth, back and forth, and Moony is right there yet unreachable, and he has always prided himself on the fact that he was able to support Moony in all the ways he needed him and now he feels so absolutely useless and dependent, and he can’t breathe, lost between fragments, shatters of what was and is, memories slipping through his fingers like sand, like shards of melting ice - 

“Sirius,” Moony says. He puts his pen away and gets up, and Sirius thinks that they knew their way around each other once, but now everything is off, out of balance. Twelve years after, they don‘t even look like the people they used to be: Moony is older, his face gaunter, and Sirius might have taken a bath after he arrived on Moony‘s doorstep, but he still hasn‘t done anything about his Azkaban hair or his Azkaban complexion. He thinks he used to be beautiful, once, and so proud of it. He thinks Moony once thought that he was beautiful, too.

“I‘m fine,“ Sirius says and forces a smile on his face. The lie comes to him easily.

Moony still doesn‘t look convinced. He sighs again and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Let‘s both go to sleep, then. I need to go get some things from the village tomorrow. The pantry‘s running empty.“

And just like that Sirius has an idea how to take care of Moony: Food. It is a simple thing, really, so simple that he wonders why he hasn’t thought of it sooner. He’s even done it before, once upon a time, and remembers it a little in that grey, washed-out way which is not a lot to draw from, but combined with the help of Moony‘s mother‘s cooking book which he just knows is somewhere in the kitchen of this house, it might just be enough.

His smile turns genuine, a little giddy at the thought. Maybe there is a way to make all of this right after all. “Alright.“

Moony watches him for a moment longer. Then something softens in his eyes. For a moment Sirius thinks that he might reach out and touch him, he feels so close, and he even holds his breath in anticipation.

Then Moony closes off again, turns his head and walks to the stairs. He still calls out, asks Sirius to follow. Sirius, who has always been completely unable to turn away whenever Moony calls for him, does the only thing he can do and climbs up the stairs after him.


	2. Vision

On most days Remus thinks his heart has already broken in all the ways a heart can break. Love has brought him nothing but pain, and even though he knows pain intimately, there is only so much a man can take, no matter if part monster or not. It’s actually quite comfortable, living with a broken heart. He’s lived with it for the last twelve years and not only can one get used to everything, a broken heart in particular also has the side effect that not a lot of things manage to truly touch one anymore. Living indifferently makes a lot of things easier, in the end. 

Having Sirius around makes it impossible to even think of indifference.

Having Sirius around means being hyper-aware of the cracks that cannot be filled, and of the yearning he has never quite managed to get rid of, only buried under years and years of trying to survive without thinking too much about the things he has lost. He was everything, once, and he is so close to become everything once more. And yet. And yet. Twelve years of mourning, of betrayal, they do not go away overnight. Sometimes he doesn’t want them to. And sometimes he wishes he could forgive more easily. But of them all it has always been Sirius who has forgiven the quickest and easiest. He’s always had a temper, quick and hot and downright dark sometimes, but just like a tempest in summer his fits have always blown over as quick as they came. Sirius never had a problem with asking for forgiveness, even less so with forgiving. Remus is quite bad at both, and that doesn’t necessarily make things easier.

It’s quite a bit ridiculous, he thinks. He doesn’t even know how much of the Sirius he fell in love with and can’t forgive is still in the man he’s looking at right now. Well, technically he is looking at the dog, a shaggy, too-thin shadow half-curled underneath his bed as if trying to hide from the morning sun. He can’t remember having seen Sirius sleep in his human shape since he arrived at his doorstep a few days ago. Perhaps they should talk about that. Perhaps they should talk about a lot of things.

Padfoot twitches in his sleep. Remus thinks about stroking him behind his ears and decides against it. He does decide, however, to give Sirius a haircut either today or tomorrow, it can’t go on like this. Small steps. Perhaps all they need are small steps.

For starters, Remus gets out of bed. He tries to be as quiet as possible and seems to succeed quite well since the dog doesn’t even twitch. He looks half-dead, really, and something in Remus’ chest clenches painfully tight at the thought. Nothing to be done here, for the moment. So he gathers some fresh clothes, silently slips out of the bedroom and avoids the creaking spots on the old wooden floor to get into his bathroom. It is tiny, just like the rest of the house. Sometimes he wonders how he and his parents never tripped over each other when they all lived under this very roof. Instead, there was always a lot of space between them, especially after the Incident. His parents always tried their best, he knows that. Now, after everything that happened in his life, he understands a little better that you can love people, honestly and fiercely, and still feel something that distances you from them, a quiet sort of resentment because they make your life so unnecessarily difficult. It is not nice, but it is quite human, and for someone like Remus that can be almost reassuring sometimes. 

After taking a quick shower and dressing himself, he brushes his teeth and avoids looking in the mirror. It’s three days until the next full moon, and even though it might be only noticeable to him and people who know what to look for, the wolf simmers beneath his skin. He feels and looks healthy, strong, his eyes a little more golden than usual, his senses sharper than normal. And the hunger, the hunger grows the fuller the moon gets. More and more he thinks, no, dreams of fresh meat, which, even though it’s not an option considering his slim income anyway, would sicken him to his core if it stood before him, just because he wants it so much. Sometimes, the wave of strength before the full moon is harder for him to bear than the wrung-out, pale face that looks back at him from the mirror after the full moon. For other people he just looks his best, but he knows, he knows, he knows. He hates that this - this! - is his best. There are things in his life where he thinks he could deal with them better if they were exclusively bad all the time, without any benefits at all.

Remus sighs, brushes his hair briskly as usual and leaves. There is no chance to avoid any creaking stairs since all of them creak, but the bedroom door might be thick enough to prevent Padfoot from too much noise. He makes his way into the kitchen for a cup of tea that he drinks sitting on the porch that leads into the garden. It’s a wild thing, all in all; Remus only takes care of the part of it that houses his vegetable patch and leaves the rest of it mostly in peace. The result is that it tries its best to bleed more and more into the forest behind it. Now, brushed by sunlight, it is a warm, golden summer thing with tall grass and humming bees, birds chirping in the wild rose bushes - gentle, inviting, wonderful nature that seems to sing to him. And behind that: the forest, cool and silent darkness even on summer days. Remus lifts his cup to his lips, looks over the garden towards the trees, old and tall and powerful. The forest does not sing to him. It doesn‘t have to. Remus only has to look at it to know that eventually, he will be a part of it, even if only for a night.

“Whenever I look at that tree line, I get reminded of the Forbidden Forest.”

Remus briefly looks up. Sirius stands next to him, his naked feet bare and bruised on the warm wooden porch. He is dressed in one of Remus’s trousers, one of Remus’s shirts and one of Remus‘s very old, long, velvet jackets that looks like a mix between robe and Muggle style and is a remnant of his youth. They are clothes that aren’t his and hang around his wiry body too loosely. Remus remembers Sirius how he was, once: A star deeply aware of its light, a young man with luscious, dark hair, trousers that were always a little too tight, smiles that were always a little too wide, white teeth that were always a little too sharp. _Look at me_ , Sirius seemed to scream while he unraveled, _look at me,_ while he rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. _Look at me_ , while he sent the buttons of his own shirt flying in the middle of a club. _Look at me_ , while he danced, because Sirius Black could never get enough of people looking at him. He was beautiful and he knew, he was wickedly clever and he knew, he was the right amount of tragic and maybe a little bit too mad, and he didn‘t always know that, but it drew people towards him. 

This Sirius Black hides in Remus‘s too-wide clothes and curls into them as much as possible as he sits down next to Remus, leaning towards him without touching him like a dog unsure of its owner‘s approval. Remus could reach over and close the last few millimetres of space between them, Sirius is so close. He lifts the cup to his lips again instead, tastes Earl Grey and the slightest hint of milk. The Forbidden Forest. Harry‘s terrified face lit by the bright light of the full moon flashes before his eyes. He breathes in deeply and hums in answer.

“It‘s soon, right?“ Sirius asks after a while.

Remus hums again and doesn‘t ask if Sirius can see the moon on him. He knows he does. For a moment they are quiet. Remus checks his watch and notes that he has ten minutes left before he has to go to work while Sirius worries at the seam of the jacket like someone who wants to say something and doesn‘t know how. But then again, they never have been terribly good with words. Remus used to say too much while telling too little, and Sirius has always shown all of it in his eyes and his face and the things he does. How much of that is still true? He wonders and doesn‘t know how to ask.

Just as he finishes the last drops of his tea, Sirius asks quite suddenly, “We‘ll run together, right? During the moon?“

“I don‘t know,“ Remus says after a moment and rubs his eyes, “I don‘t know if the wolf won‘t hurt you.“

“Never,“ Sirius says with so much conviction that Remus‘s heart clenches. “Let me help you, Moony, I can help you. I know I haven‘t been around for too many moons, but I‘m here now, you don‘t have to do this alone-“

“I need to go to work,“ Remus interrupts him because he cannot take this right now, neither Sirius‘s words nor the look on his face. “We‘ll talk about this later, please.“

There would have been discussions at this point, once. Now, Sirius searches his face for a long moment before he asks, “What are you even doing?“

“Working at a store in the village.“ Remus rubs his temples, allows himself to think longingly of teaching at Hogwarts. 

It‘s almost comforting when Sirius bristles at that. “You could definitely do better than that, Moony.“

“Not going there,“ Remus says flatly and hands him his empty cup. “I‘ll be back between half past six and seven. Will you be alright?“

Sirius eyes him. “You haven‘t even eaten anything for breakfast.“

“I‘ll be alright. Will you?“

Sirius smiles faintly, and it‘s ridiculous, really, that there is still so much beauty in him that the Dementors could not steal. His fingers are long and pale and bruised around the chipped china cup. He handles it with care, fingertip slowly sliding along the rim. “Don‘t worry about me, Moony.“

Remus still worries because that‘s what he does. The worry doesn‘t keep him from doing his job since he‘s so used to it, but he goes through the motions without thinking much. The store is tiny but packed with everything necessary, from cigarettes to condoms to coleslaw. Marian, its owner, is a lovely elderly lady with more energy and strength in her body than it seems, but she is still grateful for his support. She‘s known him since he was a little boy, only a few years younger than her own children who all moved to the city. Therefore, he at least doesn‘t have to explain why he needs to take a day off every now and then; she‘s a Muggle just like the majority of the village, but she knows - or thinks she knows - that he‘s got an autoimmune disease that breaks out in short bursts every month. Another advantage is that she likes to hand him food that‘s shortly before expiring for half the price or even for free. He always protests, but only a little. Beggars can‘t be choosers, after all, and he‘s been hungry often enough by now that he appreciates it very much. Remus thinks that she might like Sirius, too. For a moment he imagines Sirius leaning against the counter and charming smile after smile from Marian - then he realizes that he imagines him as he once was and stops. 

It‘s still warm when he walks home, a bag of tomatoes, eggs and apples in his hands. The sun already touches the tall, dark tree tops of the forest, but it is still there. Remus thinks of meat, fresh and tender, and holds the bag in his hands a little harder. There are still things he has to do today - a bit of household chores, mostly, a bit of editing a few papers for other people -, but mostly, he thinks, he should really get Sirius a haircut. It‘s time.

When he opens the door and steps inside, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. A sudden fear grips him: What if Sirius is gone? What if he is hurt?

“Padfoot,“ he calls, breathes out in relief when Sirius calls, “Here! Kitchen!“

Remus blinks, then walks over. He blinks some more, but the sight before him doesn‘t change: Sirius, cheeks flushed from heat and merriness, his matted hair tied back so it fully exposes the sharp angles of his face, and a freshly baked loaf of bread in front of him. It hits him then, the memory of all the times Sirius has done this before in better days - with charred, absolutely inedible results at first until he got it right, driven by that same fierce determination he used for everything he found worth his attention. For a moment Remus‘s heart is heavy with love and sorrow.

“I made some bread,“ Sirius says and sounds so pleased with himself that Remus smiles helplessly. “And I was thinking of maybe making some jam. I made that once, right?“

“Yes, you did,“ Remus says. Then he has to sit down, so he does, placing the bag on the table in front of him before he puts his head into his hands and takes a deep breath. Twelve years, and his foolish heart apparently hasn‘t learned anything.

“Moony,“ Sirius says very softly. He puts the loaf on the table, together with butter and cream cheese and a knife, and sits down next to him, so close that they almost brush. “I just - you didn‘t have breakfast. I wanted to do something for you.“

Remus breathes in again. Then he lifts his head, reaches for the butter and the knife and cuts off a slice of bread. It‘s not perfect - after all, Sirius is a little bit out of practice -, but it‘s edible and still a little bit warm. He smears butter on it and thinks of meat, of blood bursting on the tip of his tongue, then takes a bite.

“It‘s perfect,“ he says. 

Sirius‘s smile chases the faint dream of meat from his thoughts.


	3. Hearing

After dinner, Moony sits him down in the bathroom to cut his hair.  


It is not an entirely pleasant affair at first. When Moony lifts his wand to do it, Sirius flinches so hard that he almost falls off the edge of the bathtub. His magic lashes out violently in irrational fear, barely contained lightning that bursts forth and audibly cracks the bathroom mirror, darkens the glass until it is impossible to see anything in it. They both did not expect this reaction, and so they stare at each other with wide eyes for a long moment.  


Moony is the first one to recover. Sirius can hear the whip-like crack in his back when he straightens, puts the wand away and says quite neutrally, ”I’ll get the scissors then.”  


Sirius nods silently. Shame sits in his throat and his chest, shame that is big enough to make him hyper-aware of the blood thumping through this body, quick and scared like a hunted rabbit.  


Moony pauses, scissors in his hands, and regards him with a wary gaze. His eyes are quite golden already. Sirius knows that this means that the wolf can hear his hammering rabbit heart easily. It is not a comfortable thought, but Sirius also knows this: The wolf is neither cruel nor out for blood, no matter what Moony thinks. That doesn’t always mean that the same goes for the man. He’s often experienced the sharpness of Moony’s tongue when something or someone finally managed to push his limits.  


Now, however, Moony just smiles at him when he notices Sirius looking at him. It’s a tired, flickering thing, that smile, but Sirius instinctively feels a little safer, enough to calm down the blood still rushing so audibly in his ears.  


“It’ll be alright,” Moony says, and as always Sirius believes him unwaveringly.  


“Tell me something,” he pleads as Moony gently starts untangling the mess on his head as much as possible in order to find out where to cut.  


“What do you want to know?” Moony asks a little distractedly.  


Sirius can’t tell him that it doesn’t even matter that much, that he just wants to listen to Moony’s voice. It is a beautiful voice, even though the transformations have taken their toll on Moony’s vocal chords and so when he speaks, it sounds raspier than Sirius so fuzzily remembers.  


“What did you do, after I went to Azkaban?” he asks.  


Moony says nothing for a long while. There is only the faint, metallic sound of the scissors snipping away the unsavable knots and tangles in Sirius’s hair. Sirius listens to that and to Moony’s breath, deep and controlled. His heartbeat, he thinks, is steady, but that does not necessarily mean that Moony is not afraid.  


“I went away for a while,” he finally says. His voice is a slow, cautious stream that flows smoother the more he talks. Sirius closes his eyes and solely concentrates on the sound of his words. “I just … I tried to get a hold on Harry, but they wouldn’t let me. I probably should have done more.”  


He is quiet, but Sirius clearly hears what he doesn’t say. _But I was so tired. I was so sad. I had just lost everything, and how would I have taken care of him anyway?_ Sometimes Sirius lay awake at night in Azkaban and tortured himself by thinking of how important the pack was to Moony - to all of them, but to him perhaps the most - and how he had lost it in its entirety just in one night.  


He wishes he could touch Moony, but he is conveniently placed behind him and Sirius doesn’t want him to cut a hole in his hair. “I’m sorry.”  


And then he tenses because Moony stops cutting and gently touches Sirius’s nape with his fingertips. It is a fleeting thing, that touch, but Sirius almost doesn’t dare breathe. Moony hasn’t touched him apart from the bare minimum so far. But now he does, and Sirius is so very quiet because he wants to listen to Moony’s breath, deeper and more measured now in a way that sends a prickle over Sirius’s skin.  


Then Moony breathes out, sighs and continues his work. The spell is broken, but Sirius is still a little tangled in it when Moony starts talking again. “Anyway, I left England for a while after that. I went to Amsterdam for five or six years.”  


“The Netherlands? And how was that?”  


This time he can hear the smile in Moony’s voice. “Nice. They don’t see werewolves like we do, their legal status is better. Their university is excellent, too. I worked there a little, did my degree in Cryptozoology and mostly went on expeditions all over the world to study Dark creatures.”  


“Did you like it?”  


“A lot.” He can hear the scissors being put away. Then Moony is back again and gently starts brushing Sirius’s hair. “At one point we went to India for a few weeks. Too hot for my taste, but it was … intriguing. We were on the lookout for Occamies - beautiful, but extremely aggressive and territorial, so we had to be careful. And we got lucky, found a pretty big one. Twenty feet, rather impressive and a little intimidating.”  


“Cute.”  


Moony laughs at that, a low, raspy sound that causes something in Sirius’s chest to ache. The Dementors sucked the memory of that sound out of him, too, but its faded husk lingers in his head, too powerful to go away entirely even after twelve years. “Only you can find something like that cute. I remember when we stumbled over that Red Cap before the war-” He stops himself, breathes in.  


Sirius can remember the incident, but not entirely. He thinks there might have been a mixture of dread, joy and excitement, that the joy and excitement might have outweighed back then, but the Dementors, naturally, largely left the dread. “I tried to keep it as a pet, right?”  


Moony exhales. Again his fingertips rest so very lightly in Sirius’s neck. “Yes. Bloody good thing that James managed to talk you out of that one - it almost bit off your right hand. Do you remember that?”  


“Yeah. You were sulking the whole time afterwards.”  


“I wasn’t sulking, I was furious. You could have seriously been injured, you idiot.”  


Warmth blooms in Sirius’s chest, sudden and unexpected, and he can’t help but grin. There is something in Moony’s voice that suggests that he still isn’t entirely over that, which means that he might still not be over a lot of moments where Sirius was particularly stupid and almost killed himself because he just had to know some things, which means that he might still care for him. He knows they should talk about some heavier things - there is still so much pain -, but for now he doesn’t care. He turns around and there Moony is, a solid figure with a brush in his hand, looking at him with wolf eyes. Sirius likes that he knows that the wolf is there. It’s actually not that visible if one doesn’t know where to look, but he does. But the wolf will have his time and devotion in a couple of nights. For now, he reaches out for the man.  


Moony starts a little when Sirius closes his fingers around his wrist. He doesn’t know whether it’s Moony’s heartbeat that pumps through his fingers or his own. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. For a moment they simply look at each other, and it is quiet. It is quiet, and Sirius thinks that he still loves him. That he has never stopped, not even in Azkaban when most of what was left was the pain and the feeling of betrayal. Now he thinks he should have known that Moony couldn’t be the traitor. And he thinks a part of him always knew, the part that knew that Moony’s love is a quiet, but steadfast thing, his heart so careful but strong once it settles. It’s just that Sirius has always been a little mad even before Azkaban, curse of being a Black probably, and sometimes his brain just short-circuits, emotions flying off the handle. Sometimes he thinks he feels too much, no layer of protection against anything at all. Sometimes he thinks he might die from this one day, from this utter inability to keep a cool head when he needs it the most.  


Moony tends to keep it for him, when he can. And he does it now, too, because when Sirius opens his mouth to say something wholly inappropriate and way too intense for the careful manner they try to find their way around each other again in, he tucks a strand of freshly-cut hair behind Sirius‘s ear and says, “How about you take a quick shower?“  


“Are you calling me filthy?“ Sirius demands to know in mock outrage and Moony smiles, quick and easy and amused.  


“If that‘s what you heard, there might be a kernel of truth in it,“ he replies and leaves, but Sirius can faintly hear him whistle somewhere down the corridor. It‘s nice, knowing that Moony is in a good mood. So shortly before the full moon it‘s always a fifty-fifty chance - either he is irritated and sharp, or he is attentive and energetic. Sirius only really remembers the former, but there are wisps of memories about the latter, some of them warming his cheeks while he stands under the spray of the shower. Energetic indeed. The wolf likes to play, and so does Moony if caught in the right mood.  


He shouldn‘t think about this. He really shouldn‘t.  


What he does think about, though, is that Moony ate his bread and some of the soup he made as well, but he knows that what he really wants and really deserves is meat. He knows that Moony in his younger years used to be so, so ashamed of that craving, even more so when they all tried to take care of him as well as they could. Sirius only ever thought that it‘s a logical conclusion - his body, preparing for something stressful and big, requiring more nutrition. But for Moony it was a sign of the beast taking over, nothing more.  


He wonders if it’s still the reason Moony doesn’t indulge, or if the financial reasons outweigh the irrational fears. Knowing Moony, it‘s probably a mix of both. But then again, that‘s what he got Sirius for, for taking care of him when he doesn‘t do it himself.  


After Sirius steps out of the shower and dries himself off, he looks in the mirror. It‘s an accident - he just glances up for a moment while searching for his toothbrush, but then he freezes. He doesn‘t look like he used to; he will never look like that ever again. But his hair is inky silk again, tips smoothly brushing his shoulders, the glossy strands softening the bruises underneath his eyes and the sharpness of his bones. He thinks he might be able to feel beautiful again, one day, and it‘s a powerful feeling, powerful enough to let him breathe out shakily. A part of him wants to flee into the dog because it‘s too much. The rest of him cleans his nails, brushes his teeth, looks at his reflection once more just to make sure. When he smiles at himself it‘s still the bared teeth of a wild thing on the run, but it‘s softer around the edges.  


There is music gently spilling over the night-dark wooden floor of the corridor until it reaches his ears.  


He pulls a fresh shirt over his head, puts his boxers back on and picks his way through the corridor towards the bedroom without turning on the light. There is the record player, Freddie Mercury‘s distinctive voice crooning along the gentle notes of a piano that play an unmistakable tune, only interrupted by a faint crackle of the record every now and then. There is Moony, clad in pyjama bottoms and seated in the faded armchair in the corner, legs crossed and the scars on his upper body on full display. He‘s got a book in one hand and his eyes are trained on the words in front of him, but his foot is moving in that absent-minded way that Sirius suddenly remembers quite vividly from so many nights in another life where they shared a flat and were young, Moony laughing at him dancing his heart out to Queen and Bowie and the Sex Pistols and yet howling with him all the same whenever Bohemian Rhapsody was played. And there was Prongs, too, taking Sirius‘s hands and yelling along the lines of You‘re My Best Friend whenever one of them put it on as they all sprawled on various surfaces in Sirius‘s and Moony‘s flat. For a moment Sirius thinks he might have found a new way to break his own heart. There will never not be at least one part of his heart that yearns for Prongs, who will never be able to listen to Queen again or watch his wonderful son grow older. But at least he has this: Moony with old and new scars, a small, soft smile and glinting eyes of gold.  


He thinks it might not be a coincidence that Moony felt like listening to Love Of My Life tonight, and even if it is, he can‘t help himself. He needs to hope. He wants to ask about it, might have, too, in another life. In this life, however, he just silently sits down right at Moony‘s feet and leans his head against the armchair, cheek brushing the old fabric. He closes his eyes and feels Moony pause for a moment. Then there is a hand in his hair, fingers gently running through the silky strands.  


“It‘s better now,“ Moony murmurs.  


_When I grow older I will be there by your side to remind you how I still love you_ , Freddie Mercury croons, the voice of a ghost so strong and gentle still. They all are ghosts in their own way, Sirius thinks and leans closer into Moony‘s touch, strong and gentle ghosts, still.  


“Much better,“ he agrees.


End file.
